Part 4: Good old days bypass new vets

Members from the Cal State Fullerton ROTC unit run the stairs at Titan Stadium during a recent two hour morning workout. MICHAEL GOULDING, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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David Marshall, right, a former El Toro Marine who worked for 35 years in aerospace, stands near a rogues gallery of other veterans who frequent Paul's Coffee Shop in Fountain Valley. MICHAEL GOULDING, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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David Marshall, a former El Toro Marine who worked for 35 years in aerospace, is part of a regular breakfast group that gathers every Tuesday at Paul's Coffee Shop in Fountain Valley. MICHAEL GOULDING, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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David Marshall, a former El Toro Marine who worked for 35 years in aerospace, heads into Paul's Coffee Shop in Fountain Valley for his regular Tuesday breakfast with other former Marines. MICHAEL GOULDING, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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The waitress at Paul's Coffee Shop has a little fun with some of the regulars who gather there on Tuesdays. MICHAEL GOULDING, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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David Marshall, a former El Toro Marine who worked for 35 years in aerospace, enjoys the company of his regular breakfast group which gathers every Tuesday at Paul's Coffee Shop in Fountain Valley. MICHAEL GOULDING, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Pete Alvitre stands in front of a C-17 Globemaster airplane, the model of aircraft he helped build the wings for at the Boeing Company plant in Long Beach. MICHAEL GOULDING, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Pete Alvitre stands in front of a C-17 Globemaster airplane, the model of aircraft that he helped build the wings for at the Boeing Company plant in Long Beach. MICHAEL GOULDING, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Pete Alvitre stands in front of the tail section of a C-17 Globemaster airplane, the model of aircraft that he helped build the wings for at the Boeing Company plant in Long Beach. MICHAEL GOULDING, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Tom and Robin Umberg of Orange County in 2004. She commanded nursing units in the U.S. and retired as a brigadier general last year. She's now an undersecretary for Veterans Affairs in Sacramento. He worked as a prosecutor on anti-terrorism cases and was later assigned to Afghanistan with an anti-corruption job. COURTESY OF U.S. ARMY

Today's recruits are tomorrow's veterans who will face an evolving society.

Editor's note: We are approaching two 10-year anniversaries. Sept. 11 we all remember. But Oct. 7 we seem to have forgotten. It marks 10 years of war: first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq – longer than any time in U.S. history. More than 6,200 dead. More than 45,000 wounded. Over four Sundays, the Orange County Register will tell the story of the more than 2 million troops who've fought in these wars. As we commemorate the anniversaries of Sept. 11 and Oct. 7, let us, as a nation, seek to understand the sacrifices made as a result of them.

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The “iron triangle” is rusted and broken in Orange County.

For a half century the triangle – military, defense industry and politics – made Orange County a reservoir of high-paying jobs for veterans who could go from military service to servicing the military machine. Housing was relatively cheap, and when local veterans went to schools, clubs and hiring offices they often found other veterans.

“In 1962, I walked out the front gate of El Toro on a Friday and walked in the front gate at North American in Anaheim on Monday,” said Marine veteran David A. Marshall, 71, of Santa Ana.

”They were looking for veterans. There were so many Marines living on Minnie Street in Santa Ana we called it ‘Air Station Number Three.’”

The combination of local bases, factories and tens of thousands of local veterans gave Orange County a military hue.

Veterans also could be found on nearly every level of politics, from city councils to Congress.

“The Marines for a long time ran Orange County – in politics, in business, in law and society. They were everywhere,” said former Assemblyman Tom Umberg. “I was a Democrat and Army in a Marine, Republican county.”

There would be economic booms and busts, but the overall arc was up. The system worked from the early 1950s to the early 1990s. As late as 1991, the county estimated 232,000 veterans among the 2.4 million residents.

But for veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq, Orange County is a different place. The county estimates there are 140,000 veterans in a county of 3 million. The population grew and housing prices rose as bases closed and defense industries closed or consolidated. Today no member of Congress from Orange County served in uniform.

That shift means that veterans who come back from Afghanistan or Iraq are returning to an Orange County that offers fewer opportunities and less of a sense of community than it did for veterans of World War II, Korea, Vietnam and even the first Gulf War.

Lt. Col. John Nepute, 50, who teaches military science at Cal State Fullerton, asks students if they had relatives in the military. What he hears is a generation gap.

“When it’s yes, it’s almost always Great Grandpa was in World War II or Grandpa was in Vietnam,” he said. “It’s not very often Mom and Dad.”

A CHANGING LANDSCAPE

Brett Conover couldn’t wait to get into the Army, so this year he dropped out of college and signed up for a chance to join the elite 75th Ranger Regiment. At 23, he’s busy preparing to become a soldier – not thinking about becoming a veteran.

“Four years, 17 weeks, that’s what I signed up for,” he said. He’ll go to boot camp in March and, if he qualifies, would be with his unit by summer of next year. A deployment is likely.

“They’ve had a battalion in Iraq or Afghanistan since 2002,” Conover said of the 75th Ranger Regiment.

Conover is concentrating on getting into physical shape for boot camp. Whatever job or veterans benefits might come at the end of his four or 10 or 20 years of military service isn’t on his radar.

“I don’t think about it, really,” Conover said.

Though the economy will hopefully have turned around by the time he gets out, Conover and other veterans of this era won’t necessarily find the good jobs and great benefits that seemed to come naturally for earlier generations of veterans who settled in Orange County

“It’s a very different and difficult time for most veterans,” said Esmael Adibi, the chief economist at Chapman University in Orange.

Orange County’s days as a linchpin in what used to be called “the military industrial complex” are long gone. Today’s major employers are in areas such as pharmaceuticals, artificial hearts, entertainment, digital communications, hospitals and universities.

And the industries that in the past might have been an entry point for veterans – construction, manufacturing and retail – are struggling in the economic downturn. Add in competition from thousands of unemployed and the math for veterans turns daunting.

“A veteran who was, say, a medic, may be able to find a good job in health care,” Adibi said. “But others without skills that match up (to the modern economy) are going to have a hard time. Even if they are hard working, if they don’t have very specific skills that match the job, they won’t get hired.”

THE GOLDEN AGE

David Marshall just wanted to get away from a hard life in New York City when he joined the Marines in 1957. He was taught to service hydraulic systems in jets at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. He also found a home.

“Orange County was beautiful, everything separated by orange groves and bean fields,” Marshall recalled. “The weather was fantastic. You could jump in the car and go to Laguna. I told my girlfriend she had to come out because I was never going back.”

Marshall married the girl and, after the service, got a job working on auxiliary rockets on Minuteman ICBM missiles built to hurl atomic warheads at the Soviet Union. Historian Kevin Starr wrote that while the rest of the country was doing “drop and cover” drills for nuclear war, Orange County suffered “peace scares” when thaws with Russia threatened the build-up that kept billions flowing to local contractors.

Marshall later went on to work on moon rockets and the B-1 bomber. He retired in 1977, at age 57 and now can often be found some mornings at Paul’s Coffee Shop, a Marine hangout in Fountain Valley that offers “Semper Finer Dining.” a play on the Marine motto, “Semper Fidelis” – always faithful.

“It’s been a good life, I will tell you,” Marshall said. “I used to love going to work. It was exciting work. What you were doing really meant something. We were going to beat the Russians to the moon.

“I don’t think a lot of my friends who stayed back in New York had that.”

END OF THE LINE

Marshall’s experience is gone – almost. Pete Alvitre of Anaheim is a remnant of a lost age. The 1960s Army airborne veteran has a $30-an-hour union job building the wings at Boeing’s C-17 Globemaster III military transport factory in Long Beach.

Alvitre has a personal stake in the plane. Three of his sons have followed him into the Army airborne and one even jumped out of a C-17. His youngest son, Matthew, served three tours of duty in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.

Alvitre knows the door he walked through four decades ago is closed to most veterans today. The C-17 is the last airplane being built in Southern California, with 10 planes due to be built in 2012, many for foreign countries such as Australia, the United Arab Emirates and India. Alvitre plans on retiring at the end of this month to help save the jobs of less senior workers.

“My advice to anyone coming out of the service right now is to go to college and learn a profession because jobs like mine are going away,” he said.

GOODBYE, SEMPER FI

The American Legion and VFW Posts, the El Toro PX, and the barbershops in places like Santa Ana and San Clemente that still knew how to cut it “high and tight” – they all helped give Orange County its identity. It was a deeply patriotic, conservative place – particularly on military and veterans issues where politics dovetailed with jobs.

Veterans like Donald Bren of the Irvine Company were leaders of the business community. The Board of Supervisors was chaired by a retired Marine general, Thomas Riley. Veterans, especially Marines, were in the local delegations to Washington and Sacramento. Today, less than 20 percent of Congress has served in the military, a post-World War II low. As late as 1975, 70 percent of Congress was made up of veterans. In Orange County, the percentage is zero.

Tom Umberg, the former assemblyman, hopes veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan will get involved in politics, even if they end up running with the other party.

“Veterans bring a humility with them that is needed,” he said. “They know what it means to serve your country and what the price can be for that service. Public service is a way to serve again.”

THE DEBT AND THE BILL

In Washington and Sacramento, veterans and military issues are going to be on the table – and sometimes at odds with one another.

“We’re not in the post-war (period) yet, but we’re close” said Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and ex-Pentagon manpower chief.

“For all practical purposes, Iraq is over. Afghanistan is supposed to be over by 2014. We still have trainers there, but we have trainers all over the world”.

Korb said when the wars finally wrap up and the bill is tallied, the nation will face some uncomfortable choices. About $100 billion of the baseline $553 billion defense budget already goes to military health care costs and retirement pay.

“That’s before you even pay the people who are serving today,” Korb said.

“You are paying so much out to people who don’t work for you anymore that it makes it harder to do other things for the people you have.”

Those costs have to be brought under control, he added. As that happens, Americans – and future veterans - might not like their options.

“How do you handle those (military) costs without breaking faith with the troops who served and will serve?”

Anthony Coates, 44, grew up in San Clemente amid Marines. He never planned to be in the military, but the sergeant major is at 22 years and counting in the U.S. Army. He served in Desert Storm and did three tours in Iraq.

“You see ‘support the troops’ a lot and I appreciate it,” Coates said.

“You know they call the World War II guys the ‘Greatest Generation,’ and they deserve it,” he added.

“But look at this generation - Panama, Desert Storm, Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan. Think about the reservists who drive hundreds of miles to get to their training and then are asked to leave their families and deploy two, three times.

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